Chinese sailors this week threw flowers into the sea to mark a key but little-known victory against then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) forces, who fled to Taiwan after losing the Chinese Civil War to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949.
China’s military periodically likes to remind Taiwan it still considers the nation one of its strategic priorities, and in September last year held three days of live-fire drills in the Taiwan Strait.
After 1949, KMT forces retained control of several small island groups along the coast of eastern China, from where they launched guerrilla raids into China and harassed Chinese shipping.
While most were later abandoned as being too distant to protect from Taiwan, some were taken by force by China, including the Yijiangshan Islands (一江山戰役), which fell in 1955 in a crucial psychological defeat for the KMT.
heads bowed
In a statement late on Monday, the Chinese Ministry of Defense showed pictures of sailors throwing flowers into the sea near the islands and bowing their heads in memory on the deck of a warship, ahead of next week’s traditional tomb-sweeping holiday.
“The naval ship Dabieshan carried out a solemn ceremony to remember the martyrs who gloriously sacrificed themselves in the battle for the Yijiangshan Islands,” the ministry said.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate